"I wonder at it myself. Perhaps you have helped to jog my memory. Well, well, we were young and foolish once. So this has been your life for the last ten years?"
"Yes; just this, and nothing else," with a sigh.
"No wonder you are thin, and have forgotten how to smile. Ten years of this sort of thing! Well, you women beat us after all;" and then he turned on his heel and went down the little garden path bordered by Faith's roses.
In a very little while Dr. Stewart took up his position in Hepshaw, and buckled to his work in a stout, uncompromising manner that seemed natural to him. From his patients he reaped golden opinions, in spite of a deeply-rooted dislike of humbug, and a tendency to shrug his shoulders impatiently over feminine fads and fancies. He was soon a general favorite. He was prompt and kind-hearted; in cases of real suffering nothing could exceed his patience and watchfulness. People soon got over his little brusqueness, and said openly that Dr. Stewart was a real acquisition to the neighborhood.
He had taken temporary lodgings in the village; but report was already busy with the fact that Juniper Lodge, Dr. Morgan's old house, next door to the Misses Palmer, had been visited more than once by the new surgeon. By-and-bye suspicion became certainty, when painters and workmen arrived on the premises. Soon the forlorn exterior of Juniper Lodge began to wear a brighter look—the old green verandah was repainted, fresh papers and plenty of whitewash made the dark old rooms habitable, the evergreen shrubs were cut down or transplanted, the walks weeded and gravelled, a van-load of furniture made its appearance, and a tidy-looking woman with a pleasant Scotch face, answering to the name of Jean, took up her residence. The next day there was a brass plate up; and Dr. Stewart quietly walked into the Evergreens, and announced formally to the sisters that he was their next-door neighbor.
"And a very pleasant neighbor too," observed Miss Hope to her gossips; "so different to Dr. Morgan, with that slatternly housekeeper of his always down at heels and talking to the postman at the gate. That Jean must be a treasure; it is a treat to look at her caps and aprons. I have been all over the house, and you could eat your dinner off the floor, as the saying is. Dr. Stewart drops in to see us very often; it brightens Charity to have a good chat with him. They have fine long arguments sometimes, only he always gets the best of it. He makes a rare commotion when he comes, for he always pulls up the blinds and throws up the windows, though I tell him not to expose our shabby old carpet. He had Charity and her couch out on the lawn the other evening; just fancy! and the poor thing has never been out for years. She was so pleased and excited that we all had a cry over it, and then he scolded us all round."
It was quite true that the arrival of Dr. Stewart as their next-door neighbor made a great change in the little household at the Evergreens; the introduction of the masculine element diffused new life and activity. During his brief visits, for he seldom stayed long, it was wonderful how much Dr. Stewart contrived to effect. The close little parlor where Faith had toiled over weary books or sewn long seams by Cara's couch for ten monotonous years was a different place now. The obnoxious geraniums no longer blocked up the window, there was plenty of air and light; Faith no longer gasped with pale cheeks in the close oppressive atmosphere. On fine afternoons Miss Charity's couch was wheeled out under the apple-trees; the poor lady could watch the butterflies glancing round her, or the great brown bees humming round her neighbor's hive. Instead of Trench's 'Parables,' or D'Aubigné's 'Reformation,' suspicious green volumes in certain standard editions lay beside her. Faith had no need to stifle hardly-to-be-repressed yawns over Kingsley's 'Hypatia,' or 'Two Years Ago.' 'Laura Doone' and Black's 'Adventures of a Phaeton' held them enchained for hours.
"I am afraid our tastes are demoralized, we are getting very lax and dissipated over our reading. It is very nice, but there is no method in it," sighed Miss Charity.
"You have had solids for ten years, now your digestion needs a lighter form of nourishment; all work and no play dulls the brain as well as poor Jack," returned Dr. Stewart decidedly. He had come in for one of his brief, business-like visits; he was always dropping in somewhere, at the Vicarage, at Church-Stile House, at Elderberry Lodge, even at the Sycamores, where comely Mrs. Morris with her seven olive branches lived. He did not favor Brierwood Cottage often with his visits, but he constantly met Queenie going to and from her school, and walked beside her in animated conversation.
Faith met them sometimes as she went about her charitable errands among the cottages; she would turn a little pale and pass on somewhat hurriedly. Dr. Stewart never stopped her on these occasions; he would go on with his talk, casting shrewd kindly glances under the girl's shady straw hat. Poor Faith would look at them wistfully, with a shy, deprecating smile; she would have a certain sinking of heart for hours afterwards. "He admires her, I knew he would," she would say to herself a little sadly.